Richard Whittall:

The Globalist's Top Ten Books in 2016: The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer

Middle East Eye: "

The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer is one of the weightiest, most revelatory, original and important books written about sport"

“The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer has helped me immensely with great information and perspective.”

Bob Bradley, former US and Egyptian national coach: "James Dorsey’s The Turbulent World of Middle Eastern Soccer (has) become a reference point for those seeking the latest information as well as looking at the broader picture."

Alon Raab in The International Journal of the History of Sport: “Dorsey’s blog is a goldmine of information.”

Play the Game: "Your expertise is clearly superior when it comes to Middle Eastern soccer."

Andrew Das, The New York Times soccer blog Goal: "No one is better at this kind of work than James Dorsey"

David Zirin, Sports Illustrated: "Essential Reading"

Change FIFA: "A fantastic new blog'

Richard Whitall of A More Splendid Life:

"James combines his intimate knowledge of the region with a great passion for soccer"

Christopher Ahl, Play the Game: "An excellent Middle East Football blog"

James Corbett, Inside World Football

Tuesday, May 28, 2013

A decision by European soccer body UEFA to grant Gibraltar
the right of membership potentially opens the door to Kurdistan to seek
association with the Asian Football Confederation (AFC) in a move that would
acknowledge demands for increased autonomy and the possible shifting of
national borders in the Middle East as a result of a wave of change sweeping
the region and the civil war in Syria.

The UEFA decision on Gibraltar following a ruling by the
Lausanne-based Court of Arbitration of Sport (CAS) and the possible Iraqi
Kurdish application to the AFC puts pressure on world soccer body FIFA to
loosen its rules on membership as the group gears up for its general assembly
in Mauritius next week.

CAS ruled that UEFA’s adoption in 1999 of FIFA’s rule that
members need to be recognized by the United Nations was unfair. UEFA originally
accepted the UN rule in 1999 to appease Spain which was opposed to the British
outpost’s membership.

FIFA has used the rule to bar groups like the Kurds but
relaxed its criteria for Palestine, which was granted membership despite not
having full UN membership. The AFC’s statutes refer to the UN rule only
indirectly by stating that membership has to comply with FIFA’s statutes.

An application by Iraqi Kurdistan is likely to be resisted
by Middle Eastern members of the AFC that are largely controlled directly or
indirectly by governments that have been put on the defensive as a result of the
popular revolts in the region and an international community that is reticent
to see a redrawing of colonial-era borders.

Iraqi Kurdistan has been autonomous within Iraq since
Western powers imposed a no-fly-zone in the early 1990s to protect the Kurds from
retaliation by then Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein. Iraqi Kurds see their national
soccer team as a vehicle to assert nationhood and achieve eventual statehood.

The Kurds are but one group, albeit the most important one
in the Middle East, that is demanding greater self-rule and recognition of
national rights. The civil war in Syria has raised questions about what a
post-Bashar Al-Assad state would look like with Syrian Kurds demanding autonomy
and fears that Mr. Al-Assad’s last resort may be to carve out a state for his
minority Alawite sect. Kurdish guerrillas in Turkey are negotiating with the
government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan greater rights within Turkey.

Sunni Muslim tribal leaders in Iraq are demanding a
federation that would give them greater control of their own affairs against
the backdrop of increased sectarian violence. Other multi-ethnic states in the
Middle East like Iran risk minorities demanding greater rights. Israel and the
Palestinians have yet to agree on their borders as part of an elusive peace
agreement.

“Ominous political realities may be rendering the
nation-state system incompatible with the emerging new Arab world….the
disintegration that the region has already witnessed – and will undoubtedly
continue to witness – will reverberate beyond the Arab map with the creation of
a sovereign Kurdish state. Such a state, whether existing de facto or with
widespread formal recognition, will have an ever-lasting effect on the
boundaries of the Arab world (Syria and Iraq) and of the wider Middle East
(Turkey and Iran),” said Saudi analyst Nawaf Obaid, a visiting fellow at the
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard University’s
Kennedy School of Government, in a recent analysis.

A statement by Iraqi Kurdish president Massoud Barzani
equating sports to politics as a way of achieving recognition adorns Iraqi
Kurdistan’s three major stadiums and virtually all of its sports centers and
institutions. “We want to serve our nation and use sports to get everything for
our nation. We all believe in what the president said,” says Kurdistan Football
Federation (KFF) president Safin Kanabi, scion of a legendary supporter of
Kurdish soccer who led anti-regime protests in Kurdish stadiums during Saddam
Hussein’s rule.

While Arab states’ natural inclination would be to reject an
Iraqi Kurdish application to the AFC, some believe that opponents of Mr.
Al-Assad, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar may use it as leverage to persuade
Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki to reduce support for Mr. Al-Assad. Iraq
has a one year, 800,000 ton oil contract with Syria and is believed to allow
Iranian cargo planes headed for Syria to regularly transit its air space.

The KFF has been demanding since last year that FIFA grant
its team the right to plqy international friendlies in much the same way that
the soccer body allowed Kosovo and Catalonia to do so.

“Like any nation, we want to open the door through football.
Take Brazil. People know Brazil first and foremost through football. We want to
do the same. We want to have a strong team by the time we have a country. We do
our job, politicians do theirs. Inshallah (if God wills), we will have a
country and a flag” adds Kurdistan national coach Abdullah Mahmoud Muhieddin.

James M.
Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies
at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University, co-director of the Institute
of Fan Culture at the University of Würzburg, and the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog.

Monday, May 20, 2013

Saudi Arabia, under domestic and international pressure to
grant women sporting rights, is creating separate stadium sections so that female
spectators and journalists can attend soccer matches in a country that has no
public physical education or sporting facilities for women.

The move announced by the recently elected head of the Saudi
Football Federation, Ahmed Eid Alharbi, a storied player believed to be a reformer,
also comes as soccer is emerging as a focal point of dissent in the
conservative kingdom.

Saudi Arabia has been slow in granting limited enhancement
of women’s rights in response to demands by activists. Women in Saudi Arabia
are banned from driving, travelling without authorization from a male relative
and banned from working in a host of professions. Saudi Arabia’s religious
police said last month that women would be allowed to ride bikes and motorbikes
in recreational areas provided that they were properly dressed and accompanied
by a male relative.

Saudi Arabia recently also announced that it would allow
girl’s physical education in private schools as long as they do so in line with
Islamic law. Yet, a five-year national sports plan, the kingdom’s first,
currently being drafted does not make provisions for women’s sports. Saudi
sources say the government is also for the first time considering licensing
women’s soccer clubs.

Saudi Arabia last year sent under pressure from the
International Olympic Committee women athletes, albeit expatriate ones, to the
2012 London Olympics, the first time Saudi women competed in an international
tournament. The kingdom is also under pressure from the West Asian Football
Federation, which earlier this year, issued guidelines to ensure that women
have equal rights and opportunities in soccer.

Speaking at King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, according
to Saudi press reports, Mr. Alharbi hinted at the economic impact of allowing
women to attend matches by saying that the creation of facilities for them
would increase capacity at various stadiums by 15 percent. He said the Prince
Abdullah Al-Faisal Stadium in Jeddah would be the first to accommodate up to
32,000 women followed by the King Abdullah City stadium in the capital in 2014.
Saudi Arabia, which enforces strict gender segregation, first announced in 2012
plans to upgrade the Jeddah stadium to enable women to enter.

Meanwhile, in the latest politically-loaded soccer incident,
Al Ittihad SC of Jeddah, filed a complaint against Riyadh’s Al Hilal SC after
an Al Ittihad official and fans tweeted and chanted racist remarks. Al Ittihad,
which has a number of dark-skinned Saudi players, and Al Hilal are among Saudi
Arabia’s top clubs.

“The last match between Al-Hilal and Al-Ittihad clearly
revealed the indecency of Al-Ittihad players through two movements – one from
‘the monkey’ Fahd Al-Muwallad who did not stop proceeding when Muhammad
Al-Qarni was injured in a jostle with him. Secondly, (they) did not fulfill the
commitment to Majed Al-Murshidi, and did not greet or thank him,” Saud
Al-Sahli, assistant director of public relations and announcer at King Fahd
International Stadium in Riyadh, said on Twitter. Al Hilal fans chanted Some
Al-Hilal fans had shouted “Nigger, Nigger” during the match earlier this month.
Messrs. Al-Muwallad and Al-Qarni are both dark-skinned.

Saudi newspapers warned that racist incidents threaten to
rekindle religious sectarianism, tribalism, and regionalism in the kingdom, in
part a reference to Shiite Muslim protests in the oil-rich Eastern Province.

“The
racist and sectarian utterances of sports fans should not be punished by fines
alone, as some heads of the sports clubs are immensely rich and can pay the
fines against their fans without feeling any burden. There should be harsher
punishments, including a ban on the fans from entering the stadiums, reducing
the club’s league points or even downgrading it to a lower division,” the Saudi
Gazette said in an editorial.

Members of the royal family with positions in Saudi soccer
or who own clubs have been repeatedly in the past year in the firing line of disgruntled
fans. A Facebook page entitled Nasrawi Revolution demands the resignation of
Prince Faisal bin Turki, the owner of storied Riyadh club Al Nasser FC and a
burly nephew of King Abdullah who sports a mustache and chin hair. A You Tube
video captured Prince Faisal seemingly being pelted and chanted against as he
rushed off the soccer pitch after rudely shoving a security official aside.

The campaign against Prince Faisal follows last year’s
unprecedented resignation of Prince Nawaf bin Feisal as head of the Saudi
Football Federation (SFF), the first royal to be persuaded by public pressure
step down in a region where monarchial control of the sport is seen as
politically important.

Prince Nawaf’s resignation led to the election of Mr. Alharbi,
a commoner, in a country that views free and fair polling as a Western concept
that is inappropriate for the kingdom. Prince Nawaf retained his position as
head of the Saudi Olympic Committee and the senior official responsible for
youth welfare that effectively controls the SFF.

Nevertheless, the resignation of Prince Nawaf and the
campaign against Prince Faisal gains added significance in a nation in which
the results of premier league clubs associated with various members of the
kingdom’s secretive royal family are seen as a barometer of their relative
status, particularly at a time that its septuagenarian and octogenarian leaders
prepare for a gradual generational transition.

Said a Saudi journalist, summing up the mood among fans and
many other Saudis: “Everything is upside down. Revolution is possible. There is
change, but it is slow. It has to be fast. Nobody knows what will happen.”

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam
School of International Studies, director of the University of Würzburg’s
Institute of Fan Culture, and the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East
Soccer blog.

Sunday, May 19, 2013

Algeria is competing to be the next Arab nation to witness a
popular revolt. That is assuming soccer is a barometer of rising discontent in
a region experiencing a wave of mass protests that have already toppled the
leaders of Egypt, Tunisia, Libya and Yemen and sparked civil war in Syria.

In fact, there is increasingly little doubt that soccer, a historic nucleus
of protest in Algeria, is signaling that popular discontent could again spill
into the streets of Algiers and other major cities. Two years ago, protesters inspired
by events in Egypt and Tunisia, ultimately pulled back from the brink despite
the toppling of Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak and Tunisia’s Zine El Abidine
Ben Ali.

Now, in circumstances similar to Saudi Arabia, protests are
mounting amid uncertainty about the future as Algeria’s aging leadership
struggles with a series of natural deaths and the effects of health problems
among its remaining key members.

Soccer fans earlier this month demonstrated their disdain
for the fate of 76-year old President Abdelaziz Bouteflika who is recovering
from a stroke in a Paris hospital by cheering their team for days in the
streets of Algiers in advance of an upcoming championship. Similarly, fans
interrupted a moment of silence in a stadium to commemorate the death of a
former leader by chanting “Bouteflika is next.”

Mr. Bouteflika’s illness follows the death in the past year
of two former presidents, Ahmed Ben Bella and Chadli Benjedid and Ali Kafi, who
served as a transition leader in the early 1990s while the military fought
Islamist forces who had won elections in a brutal war that left some 100,000
people dead.

The memory of that war and the military-dominated regime’s
liberal social spending temporarily took the wind out of the demonstrators’
sails and persuaded them in 2011 to shy away from staging a full-fledged revolt.

Mr. Bouteflika’s stroke threatens to change that.

"If there is not real democratic transition, there will
be an uprising ... we will return to the violence of the 1990s," warned
Chafiq Mesbah, a former member of Algeria's intelligence service and now a
political analyst, earlier this month in an interview with The Associated
Press.

The most recent protests are part of an upsurge in
soccer-related violence in Algeria, an indicator that increased wages and
government social spending is failing to compensate for frustration with the
failure of the country’s gerontocracy in control since independence to share
power with a younger generation, create jobs and address housing problems.

Dozens of people, including a player, were injured six
months ago when supporters of Jeunesse Sportive de la Saoura (JSS) stormed the
pitch during a premier league match in their home stadium in Meridja in the
eastern province of Bechar against Algiers-based Union Sportive de la Médina
d'El Harrach (USM). The incident followed a massive brawl between players and
between fans after a Libya-Algeria Africa Cup of Nations qualifier.

Relations between the two countries have been strained since
Algeria refused to support the NATO-backed popular revolt that overthrew Libyan
leader Moammar Qaddafi. Algeria granted until recently refuge to Colonel Qaddafi’s
wife Safiya and his daughter Aisha. One of his sons, Hannibal, was also believed
to be in Algeria before leaving with the other family members for Oman..Libya apologized in November after hundreds of Libyan fans
surrounded the Algerian embassy in Tripoli, ripped the Algerian emblem from the
building and burnt an Algerian flag.

The protesters’ retreat into the stadiums amounted to a
tacit understanding between Algerian soccer fans and security forces that
football supporters could express their grievances as long as they did so
within the confines of the stadiums. “Bouteflika is in love with his throne, he
wants another term," is a popular anti-government chant in stadiums.

Stadiums have long been an incubator of protest in
soccer-crazy Algeria. A 2007 diplomatic cable sent by the US embassy in Algiers
and disclosed by Wikileaks linked a soccer protest in the desert city of
Boussaada to demonstrations in the western port city of Oran sparked by the
publication of a highly contentious list of government housing recipients. The
cable warned that “this kind of disturbance has become commonplace, and appears
likely to remain so unless the government offers diversions other than soccer
and improves the quality of life of its citizens.

Seven fans were killed in the last five years in
soccer-related violence and more than 2,700 wounded, according to Algerian
statistics.

Algeria’s domestic fragility is highlighted by almost daily
smaller protests in towns across the country sparked by discontent over lack of
water, housing, electricity, jobs and salaries. Protests have led to suspension
of soccer matches. Soccer was also suspended during last year’s legislative
elections.

A sense that the government may revert to strong arm tactics
rather than reform if protests swell was reinforced when General Bachir Tartag
was recalled from retirement in 2012 to head the Directorate for Internal
Security (DSI). Gen. Tartag, who is believed to be in his sixties, made a name
for himself during the civil war against the Islamists as one of Algeria’s most
notorious hardliners and a brutal military commander.

The appointment positions him as a potential successor to
aging Algerian spy chief Gen. Gen. Mohamed ‘Tewfik’ Mediene, widely viewed as
the number two within the Algerian regime should he eventually take over from
Mr. Bouteflika.

James M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam
School of International Studies, director of the University of Würzburg’s
Institute of Fan Culture, and the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East
Soccer blog.

Sunday, May 12, 2013

Soccer, alongside minority Shiite Muslims and relatives of
imprisoned government critics, is emerging as a focal point of dissent in Saudi
Arabia, an oil-rich kingdom that despite banning demonstrations by law is
struggling to fend off the waves of change sweeping the Middle East and North
Africa.

Fan pressure is evolving as a potent tool in the absence of
the right to protest. It follows intermittent demonstrations and at times
deadly clashes with security forces in the kingdom’s predominantly Shiite Eastern
Province that hosts its major oil fields as well protests by family members of activists
imprisoned for lengthy periods of time without being charged.

In the latest assertion of fan power, a Facebook page
entitled Nasrawi Revolution demands the resignation of Prince Faisal bin Turki,
the owner of storied Riyadh club Al Nasser FC and a burly nephew of King
Abdullah who sports a mustache and chin hair. A You Tube video captured Prince
Faisal seemingly being pelted and chanted against as he rushed off the soccer
pitch after rudely shoving a security official aside.

The campaign against Prince Faisal follows last year’s
unprecedented resignation of Prince Nawaf bin Feisal as head of the Saudi
Football Federation (SFF), the first royal to be persuaded by public pressure
step down in a region where monarchial control of the sport is seen as
politically important.

Prince Nawaf’s resignation led to the election of a commoner,
storied former player Ahmed Eid Alharbi widely viewed as a reformer and
proponent of women’s soccer, in a country that views free and fair polling as a
Western concept that is inappropriate for the kingdom. Prince Nawaf retained
his position as head of the Saudi Olympic Committee and the senior official
responsible for youth welfare that effectively controls the SFF.

Nevertheless, the resignation of Prince Nawaf and the
campaign against Prince Faisal gains added significance in a nation in which
the results of premier league clubs associated with various members of the
kingdom’s secretive royal family are seen as a barometer of their relative
status, particularly at a time that its septuagenarian and octogenarian leaders
prepare for a gradual generational transition.

“The Saudis are extremely worried. Soccer clubs rather than
the mosque are likely to be the center of the revolution. Kids go more to
stadiums than to mosques. They are not religious, they are ruled by religious
dogma,” says Washington-based Saudi dissident Ali al-Ahmad, who heads the Gulf
Institute. Mr. Al-Ahmad was referring to the power of clerics preaching
Wahhabism, the puritan interpretation of Islam developed by 18th
century preacher Mohammed Abdul Wahhab. Saudi Arabia’s ruling Al Saud family
established the kingdom with the help of the Wahhabis who in return were granted
the right to ensure that their views would dominate public life.

Sport sources in the soccer-crazy kingdom say the
authorities are seeking to reduce soccer’s popularity by emphasizing other
sports like athletics and handball in policy and fund-raising while at the same
time preparing to professionalize and further commercialize the sport using the
English Premier League as a model.

“They are identifying what talent is available in the
kingdom. Football is a participatory sport. They want to emphasize the social
aspects of other sports. Football won only one medal in the last Asian Games.
They think they can score better in other sports. There are parallel agendas
with competition about who gets the visibility,” one source said.

Soccer’s popularity and competition with religion was
evident during the 2010 World Cup when authorities parked trucks in front of
Internet and other cafes, rolled out red carpets and urged Saudis watching
matches on television screens to interrupt at prayer time.

The clergy’s puritan view of life that only allowed for the
emergence of soccer in the 1950s is under pressure with clerics being forced to
retreat from their refusal to permit physical education for girls and women’s
sports facilities. Saudi Arabia recently
announced it would allow girl’s physical education in private schools as long
as they do so in line with Islamic law. Yet, a five-year national sports plan,
the kingdom’s first, currently being drafted does not make provisions for women’s
sports.

In a further move, sports sources say Saudi Arabia may be on
the verge of licensing women’s soccer clubs that currently operate in a legal
nether land often with the help of more liberal members of the royal family.
These opportunities are however largely accessible only to women from wealthier
families. Deputy Minister of Education for Women's Affairs, Nora al-Fayez, was recently
quoted as saying that public schools could follow suit.

With sports facilities for women almost non-existent, women
are forced to for example to jog dressed so that men cannot see their bodies.
Similarly, there are no opportunities to train for international tournaments.
Saudi Arabia last year fielded under pressure from the International Olympic
Committee for the first time women – albeit expatriate ones- at an
international competition during the London Olympics. In the kingdom itself, the
all-women Princess Nora Bint Abdul Rahman University is the only institution of
higher education that has sports facilities, including a swimming pool, tennis
court and exercise area for females.

Columnist Abdulateef al-Mulhim in the Arab News recently
credited women for Al Fateh SC’s success in winning the Saudi soccer
championship. The victory broke a cycle of poor performance that had depressed
a key manager of the club based in the city of Al Mubaraz, Al Mulhim wrote.

“His mother was the one who encouraged him not to give up
and gave him the financial support needed for running the club. Ironically, she
even advised him about many of the deals which involved the transfer of the
best players to the club… As time passed, people knew of more women from the
families in Al Mubaraz city.

In the official website, there are more women’s names who
are honorary members of this club such as, Fathyah, Ayshah and Fatimah Al
Rashid. There are other ladies from other families who also were part of the
general public relations through the social media means and through their
direct support…. In other words, many young men and women from the city of Al
Mubaraz put their hands together and accomplished a dream for being the best in
the Kingdom. Last year, this club was the most admired for its performance and
for the information of the readers,” Al Mulhim said.

Al Mulhim’s highlighting of the women of Al Mubaraz as well
as the introduction of sports in schools positions sports as a key platform for
enhancing women’s rights in which women retain economic rights but are even
more restricted than men in their political rights and personal lives.

Nevertheless, it reflects gradual change. Women are
prominent in various professions, will be allowed to run for office and vote
for the first time in the 2015 municipal elections, were last year admitted to
the more or less toothless top advisory council to the king and permitted to be
sales’ clerks in female apparel shops and ride motorcycles and bikes in parks
properly dressed and accompanied by a male relative. The ban, however, on
driving remains in place.

James
M. Dorsey is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International
Studies, director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute of Fan Culture, and
the author of The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer blog.

Sporticos

Ads

Soccer Results

The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer does not promote, link to or provide videos from any online sources who distribute illegal streaming content over the Internet with domains registered in the United States of America

Top 100 Soccer Sites

Subscribe To

Subscribe by Email

About Me

James M DorseyWelcome to The Turbulent World of Middle East Soccer by James M. Dorsey, a senior fellow at Nanyang Technological University’s S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies. Soccer in the Middle East and North Africa is played as much on as off the pitch. Stadiums are a symbol of the battle for political freedom; economic opportunity; ethnic, religious and national identity; and gender rights. Alongside the mosque, the stadium was until the Arab revolt erupted in late 2010 the only alternative public space for venting pent-up anger and frustration. It was the training ground in countries like Egypt and Tunisia where militant fans prepared for a day in which their organization and street battle experience would serve them in the showdown with autocratic rulers. Soccer has its own unique thrill – a high-stakes game of cat and mouse between militants and security forces and a struggle for a trophy grander than the FIFA World Cup: the future of a region. This blog explores the role of soccer at a time of transition from autocratic rule to a more open society. It also features James’s daily political comment on the region’s developments. Contact: incoherentblog@gmail.comView my complete profile